


The Forest

by blythechild



Series: Illustrations/Fan Art [40]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Attraction, Blood and Violence, Established Relationship, Fanart, Horns, Multi, Old Gods, Pagan Gods, Relationship(s), Unexplained Magic, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 04:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19055599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Emily and Aaron are about to be murdered ingloriously by bandits until nature steps in.This is a work of fanfiction, and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. The art contained in this story is original, and I claim all copyrights over it. Please do not repost it without permission. Both the art and story are suitable for those 14 and older.





	The Forest

_Trouble always finds us_ , she thought with bitterness, her back pressed to Aaron’s, with both their swords drawn, watching the circle of bandits tightening around them.

“Give us your silver,” one of them demanded through a hungry smile of brown teeth. They were almost as brown as the rags he was dressed in, and his rusty blade. _Sloppy_ , Emily thought. Destitution is no excuse for abusing a good dagger.

“We wouldn’t be living in a forest if we had silver, fool,” she muttered. She felt Aaron’s back stiffen behind her. “We’re hunters – living off the land. Just like you.”

“Not like us, pretty,” Brown-Mouth hissed, his eyes flicking to her horns. He and his band had none, making them a lower caste. “We know what you are. You hire yourselves out for coin.”

“Not anymore,” Aaron growled lowly. Emily heard him pull his dirk from its sheath. He’d die with two blades in his hands, just like he always promised her. “Not for a long time.”

“Doesn’t matter,” another one spat back, his eyes glassy from hunger or desperation, or both. 

Living wild was a hard life – both Emily and Aaron knew that from experience. It made men into beasts, reduced them to their most basic impulses. Hungry-Eyes looked Emily up and down quickly. _Here it comes_ , she thought.

“Maybe we’ll settle for you, lady longhorn.” A pale tongue flicked across his lips and then he grinned a dirty smile of his own as his confederates shuffled closer sensing the moment was coming to a head. “Have some fun with you. It’s been a while for most of us…”

“That’s because you smell like shit and rotten elderberries,” Emily mumbled. Hungry-Eyes’ brows lowered and his smile disappeared.

“Emily…” Aaron sighed behind her. He was right: she usually made the trouble worse.

“We’ll take you, cut your horns, and sell you at the slave market. Bet we’d get some good coin for you, even if you’ve been used a little by the time we get there,” Hungry-Eyes declared. Brown-Mouth and the others nodded in agreement.

“Over my dead body,” Aaron boomed, taking a half-step back to press in reassurance against Emily. Her heart beat out a sad, heavy thump at that; she wondered if he’d be as stubborn and faithful in the afterlife as he was here. She hoped so, the stupid ram’s-head…

“That’s the plan, yes,” Brown-Mouth chuckled a moment before they pounced.

Then there was just the clash of blades, rusted against burnished. The shuffling of feet in the deadfall and the shouts of attack. A grunt here as Emily landed a solid kick, a yowl there as Aaron swung wide and caught someone with his sword. Emily and Aaron fought silently, as they always did, together moving as one body, circling and covering each other to hold the onslaught off until the bandits tired or made a mistake they could exploit. It was a technique that had served them well for many years, but the bandits had nothing to lose and they outnumbered Emily and Aaron three to one. This time, they were going to die.

One of them got lucky, slashing Emily’s thigh before she claimed his hand for the offense. Aaron hissed behind her, but she didn’t know if it was a response to her cry of pain, or an injury of his own. There wasn’t time to check; they kept to their formation, but the circle was closing in. It wouldn’t be long now.

“You should’ve come willingly,” Brown-Mouth yelled, stepping over one of his fallen comrades and attacking Emily with renewed vigor.

The wind picked up suddenly, whistling through the trees with a moan that almost sounded human. The birds fell silent, as if they’d suddenly ceased to exist high up in the canopy, and the small grove they battled in grew measurably darker – almost from noon to twilight in a moment. The bandits hesitated, and Emily did as well, eyes flicked around quickly to comprehend the change. 

Whatever it was, she’d use it and worry about what it meant later. She slashed at Brown-Mouth hard and surprised him, pushing him back. The wind swirled around them, throwing leaves and ground scatter into their eyes. She didn’t understand how it seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Raising a hand to shield her face as she staggered, she tried to turn away from the unnatural storm.

A moan sounded again, and this time it wasn’t the wind. It was low and dark and menacing. Emily glanced around the edge of the grove, Aaron twisting behind her doing the same.

“What is it?” she gasped, breaking their silence.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled back.

The bandits turned away from her and Aaron to search the darkened treeline hemming them in. They forgot their pillaging as they sensed something more dangerous at their backs. Then he appeared from between the birch trunks, thin and naked, dark horns wreathed in moss and juniper bows; a man in body, but clearly _not._

“What…” Emily became riveted to the stranger. Aaron turned behind her, his chest pressing to her back as if he were trying to move forward and she was stopping him. He simply breathed an amazed, “Oh…”

The _creature_ (because he was not a man, Emily was certain) glanced at them without expression, his eyes slicing over them from the dark shadows of his face. He twitched his head – like a bird listening to the forest for a mate’s call – and he walked into the grove oddly, as if his feet weren’t touching the earth at all. He had no weapon, nothing – he wasn’t even that tall. There was only an impressive curled crown of horns, dark claws, and scars littering his angular body. Aaron pressed more urgently at Emily’s back; she had to dig her heels into the ground to stop him.

“It’s… not possible…” he whispered.

“What’s not possible?” She turned briefly to glance at him, and he was… entranced. His gaze was guileless, his mouth hanging open in awe. “Aaron, what’s wrong with you?”

Emily looked back and discovered the creature’s gimlet gaze was firmly fixed on Aaron. He cocked his head again slightly, and his mouth curled into the strangest of smiles. Emily huffed loudly, and the creature’s focus shifted to her. When it did, she felt slammed back against Aaron’s chest by the force of it, and though it made little sense to her, she immediately felt her body warm under its sparkling intensity. The creature’s smile broadened until small fangs appeared at the corners of his mouth. Then she wanted to go to him, as badly as Aaron was pressing against her to do the same. She wanted to see him up close, to touch him – she wanted it like nothing she’d ever wanted before. But she dug her boots down deeper into the earth and held them both back.

The creature laughed, mist curling up into the darkness from it, and color rose in his face. Emily’s heart sped up so quickly, she had to breathe through her mouth in odd, wet gulps. It spoke; something quiet and low that made her feel contained, like a warm blanket on a cold night. But the words were alien. She shook her head, not understanding.

“Is that… Frankish?” she asked.

“Older,” Aaron breathed. “Ancient…”

But that made no sense. Before she could consider it too much, Brown-Mouth moved towards the creature, rusted dagger held high.

“Don’t know who you are but-”

The creature’s stare switched to Brown-Mouth, and his brows lowered, and his body twisted into a sharp expression of agitation. Emily wanted to leap forward and put herself between it and the thief, but no sooner had she thought it then the creature yelled, this time in accented Saxon. 

“Come meet your end, wastrel! Your impotent blade offends me…” The creature curled his hands and beckoned Brown-Mouth closer with a smile that displayed his fangs fully and held no mirth.

Emily chuckled. _His blade offends me too…_

The grove grew darker, almost midnight black, and Brown-Mouth held up, his head twisting around in confusion.

“Or have you had enough loss for one day?” the creature asked. “If not, you are still free to lose your life. I will gladly oblige you.”

“You? Take my life? What… what is this?” Brown-Mouth choked out, blade still held threateningly. 

The creature slid closer, claws still curled but making no sound as he passed through the underbrush. “This is the world, woken and angry. It is despair at your wasted magic.”

“Angry? Despair? Magic?” Brown-Mouth’s voice rose in offense, his fear dulled momentarily by his pride. “More horned bastard tripe! Your kind aren’t so high and mighty here – you’re just a naked _goat_ in the forest. And I have a knife an’ a belly that needs filling…”

Brown-Mouth charged forward while his compatriots watched. All light dimmed in the grove until there was nothing left but a glow around him and the creature. It waited until he was close, and then grew upwards at incredible speed until he loomed over Brown-Mouth. The bandit slid to a stop in shock, but it was too late. The creature casually flicked a hand, the movement so small it seemed inconsequential. But Brown-Mouth fell to his knees instantly, dropping his knife and holding his throat as blood flowed down his filthy clothes. Emily knew the wet strangling sounds he made. _Choking on his own blood._ The creature regarded him without emotion, and slowly diminished to his original size. He flicked a clawed finger into his mouth and sucked it clean of blood.

“You were warned,” he admonished softly and watched as Brown-Mouth collapsed at his feet, dead. He licked his lips and cast a wide gaze around the grove. “Who else has his taste for oblivion?”

The remaining bandits shook their heads vigorously, eyes flicking to their fallen leader and back to the naked man who’d felled him.

“Then go,” the creature said with a disinterested wave of his long fingers.

The darkness lifted, and the winds ceased in a heartbeat. Bandits scattered into the birch trees making a racket through the deadfall that lessened quickly as they ran for their lives. Emily and Aaron remained rooted where they stood, Emily still using all her strength to hold them there. The creature shifted, his eyes finding them once more, and he smiled. The pull Emily felt before intensified until she had to close her eyes and funnel her remaining will into holding Aaron at her back. He was breathing roughly at her ear, and she could feel her heartbeat booming in her skull.

“Have to… go,” Aaron begged to no one in particular, and pushed with his whole body. She gritted her teeth and held him still.

“No, Aaron.”

“You do not wish to flee?”

Emily opened her eyes and fell under that sparkling gaze again. The thing was smiling at her. Such a smile – delighted and surprised and fascinated. _Maybe it won’t kill us then_ , she thought absently.

“We would like to,” she spoke as she dug in her heels and leaned back into Aaron at an extreme angle. “But we can’t.”

“Oh,” the creature’s smile faded, and his eyebrows popped up. Then he shuffled himself oddly, looking awkward for the first time, and slipping back into the alien language for a moment. Then the tremendous pull was gone. “My apologies. Sometimes I forget. You may go now if you wish.”

“If we wish?” Emily huffed, standing up and discovering Aaron had recovered himself as well, his hands resting at the small of her back instead of trying to trample her.

She looked at the creature – his tangled brown hair hanging to below his thin shoulders, scars littering his skin and _nothing else._ He seemed too slight to hold himself upright, let alone with his impressive horns. But he’d saved them – as much as she didn’t want to admit it – a naked forest vagabond had saved their lives when their swords and skills had failed them. It was nonsensical. And as she watched him watching her with a strange mix of curiosity and hope mottling his expression, she had another nonsensical thought. 

_I think… he needs us._

Emily took an unconscious step closer. The creature just smiled again, pleased and genuine, nothing like the animal that had tempted a man to his death and delivered upon it without feeling. Emily cocked her head as she tried to understand, and to reconcile the muted pull she still felt in her gut. The creature chuckled, making sharp lines pop up around his mouth and eyes. Something in her trembled, fluttering like a flag in the wind. Aaron shuffled up beside her and she glanced at him; he was wearing the same confused-yet-amazed look she imagined was painted over her face. When she glanced back at the creature, he was grinning broadly, face flushed. Then he bowed to them, deeply at the waist, throwing his arms out in an almost courtly manner.

“Greetings,” he mumbled kindly, and continued staring at them as if they were the wondrous mystery in that grove.

Emily looked back at Aaron, utterly confused. He was smiling at the creature with a flush of his own. Emily had rarely seen Aaron flushed.

“What… who is he?” she asked quietly.

Aaron never looked away from the creature, but his grin and his words got warmer. “He’s a god.”

 

…

[ ](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/blythechild/6784666/515345/515345_original.png)

Made in PowerPoint.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is or if it is going somewhere. There might be subsequent chapters/art.


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